Former President Carter’s post-presidency life spanned decades and in many ways eclipsed his White House career. According to the Carter Center, Carter died on Sunday.
It was a memorable four-year term that has some parallels with today’s struggles over inflation and dealing with an unstable Iran and the Middle East.
The Carter years brought a Democrat into office after the brief presidency of Gerald Ford, who took office in the wake of the Watergate controversy that ended the Nixon administration. But the Georgia Democrat’s presidency was ended by the Reagan Revolution, which shaped the political scene in the decades that followed.
Here are five defining moments from Carter’s presidency.
Camp David Accords
Carter’s crowning achievement as president was the peace treaty signed between Israel and Egypt in 1978.
Carter invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Camp David in Maryland to negotiate a peace agreement. After nearly two weeks of intense negotiations that nearly failed several times, the three men signed the Camp David Accords.
The agreements included a process for Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a draft peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and a framework for peace between Israel and its other neighbors in the region. The Sinai Peninsula was demilitarized and Israeli ships were given free passage through the Suez Canal.
Sadat and Begin later received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1981; Sadat was assassinated two years later.
Although the treaty did not lead to lasting peace throughout the Middle East and was opposed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and other Arab states, it cast a long shadow over peace negotiations in the region, including former President Clinton’s efforts in 2000.
Carter’s intervention remains one of the most significant diplomatic achievements by a president in newfangled history.
“Discomfort” speech
By mid-1979, the United States was faced with high inflation, rising interest rates, as well as unemployment and energy crises. The problems crippled Carter’s presidency. In July 1979, Carter decided to address the American public with an approval rating of just 29 percent.
In a nationally televised speech from Camp David, Carter presented energy proposals such as increasing domestic production, restricting foreign imports and taxing energy profits to fund research into fresh energy technologies.
But the speech would not be remembered for Carter’s vision of containing the economic and energy crises facing the country. Instead, Carter’s July 15, 1979 speech would be remembered as his “malaise” or “crisis of confidence” speech.
Carter said the U.S. was facing a “fundamental threat to American democracy” – what he called a “crisis of trust.” He argued that Americans had lost confidence in the ability to govern themselves and in the nation’s future.
It was a sober assessment from Carter, but one that was not warmly received by voters. Instead, public trust in the embattled president fell even further.
Olympic boycott
Against the backdrop of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Carter ordered a boycott by U.S. athletes of the 1980 Summer Olympics in the Soviet Union.
Carter convinced other countries, including Canada, West Germany and Japan, to boycott the event. Ultimately, a total of 66 countries boycotted the games to isolate Moscow, which kept troops in Afghanistan.
The 1980 boycott led to the Soviet Union boycotting the 1984 Olympic Games hosted by the United States in Los Angeles, an initiative that other Soviet states also joined.
In both games, the boycotts had a huge impact on the competition given the countries involved. Some athletes who had trained for years to compete in the Games were upset by Carter’s decision.
When the idea of allowing athletes from boycotting countries to compete in the Games under a neutral banner arose, Carter threatened to revoke U.S. athletes’ passports.
Still, many Americans viewed the decision as another opportunity to fight the Soviet regime.
The United States has not launched a similar boycott of the Olympics since 1980.
Establishment of the Ministry of Education
Carter oversaw the creation of the Department of Education, a significant expansion of the federal government that was fiercely opposed by many Republicans at the time.
GOP candidates are still talking about dismantling the federal department more than 40 years after the decision.
The newly established department was an offshoot of the Ministry of Health, Education and Welfare. It was created in part to fulfill Carter’s commitment to making the federal government more capable.
Before agreeing to create the agency in 1979, Carter argued that the federal government had blighted U.S. education because of “bureaucratic waste of money.” Although he believed that the federal government played a “subordinate role” to states and localities in education, he argued that a fresh federal bureaucracy was needed to streamline federal responsibilities.
But Carter’s move to create the department also came after he received the influential backing of the National Education Association, the largest union in the United States, in 1976. He committed to creating the department to gain support.
The department faces ongoing Republican disagreements, and many have called for its abolition over the years. By 2022, the department’s annual budget was more than $80 billion.
Hostage taking in Iran
The Carter presidency was severely rocked by the Iran hostage crisis, in which 52 Americans were held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days.
The 1980 presidential campaign took place against the backdrop of the hostage crisis that began in November 1979, after the United States admitted the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the country for medical treatment following the Islamic Revolution that overthrew him.
Daily newscasts of the hostage crisis exacerbated Carter’s already deep political problems and contributed to the impression of a defeated and sinking nation.
Carter once ordered a rescue mission to try to release the U.S. hostages. It ended in failure: eight US soldiers died when a helicopter collided with a transport plane.
Carter campaigned tirelessly for the hostages’ release, but they were released only minutes after former President Reagan was sworn in on January 20, 1981.
While polls showed a close race weeks before the 1980 presidential election, Reagan won in a landslide.
Carter won only six states and the District of Columbia and received 49 electoral votes, while Reagan won 489 votes. Reagan won the popular vote by more than 8 million votes.
